The family of a New Brunswick potato farmer jailed in Lebanon for more than a year say they want the federal government to produce some evidence to back up its claim that it helped to get Henk Tepper released.

The Drummond, N.B., man was set free and returned home over the weekend after being jailed on allegations from Algeria he sold rotten potatoes to that country.

Speaking at a new conference in Grand Falls, N.B., on Monday, Tepper’s sister Harmien Dionne asked the government to disclose what it was doing behind the scenes to secure the farmer’s release, because it’s not clear to her.

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“If they’re telling us that they have been working behind closed doors, I’d like to see some proof, because whenever we asked the government what is happening, they never could share anything with us,” Dionne said. “And as a family member and a Canadian, I find this very frustrating.

“[The government would] always say, ‘We’re in close contact with the family,’ while whenever I got an email from my contact in Ottawa, all I got to hear [was], ‘Henk is healthy, Henk is good.’ … But I never had any feeling that the Canadian government was doing anything.”

Mike Carroccetto/Postmedia NewsNew Brunswick potato farmer Henk Tepper glances at his sister Harmien Dionne, left, during a press conference held at the Ottawa International Airport on Saturday, March 31, 2012 in Ottawa.

On Saturday, the day Tepper was released and flown back to Canada, Diane Ablonczy, the minister of state for foreign affairs, said in a statement she was “pleased that Canadian consular officials have helped secure the release of Mr. Henk Tepper. … Our government has been quietly and persistently working through diplomatic channels to resolve his situation.”

Ablonczy spokesman John Babcock countered Monday the government worked constantly during the last year to secure Tepper’s release, and he forwarded various correspondence to Postmedia News. This included letters from Ablonczy and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird to high-ranking Lebanese officials, and a handwritten letter from Tepper to Hilary Childs-Adams, Canada’s ambassador to Lebanon, thanking for her for some food he received and her “personal interest” in his case.

Babcock said there are more than 100 different documents of correspondence showing the government’s work on this case, and Dionne can view them.

“Diplomacy by its definition is done quietly,” Babcock said, who added it’s natural Dionne would be told very little when asking about her brother’s case. “Government-to-government relations are usually not discussed or made public.”

Tepper’s Lebanon-based lawyer, Joe Karam, said the federal government took little interest in Tepper’s case in the initial months of his detention.

“The first months, there was a vacuum, there was something not happening from the side of the executive branch of Canada,” he said.

Karam added: “They didn’t want to interfere. One [Canadian] official told me there are 3,000 cases similar to Henk. I told him, ‘No … Henk has a unique case.’ ”

Babcock said Canada’s ambassador to Lebanon met with Tepper five days after his arrest, and efforts continued right up until his release.

“[Embassy officials] were there and involved from the beginning,” Babcock said.

Before Tepper’s arrest, Karam said Canadian officials should have taken more seriously a “red notice” issued by Algeria through Interpol, which essentially asked countries around the world to arrest Tepper. The lawyer said such a situation could have been much worse for the New Brunswick farmer if he had been arrested in a different country, such as Syria.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/henk-teppers-sister-lawyer-call-out-ottawas-lack-of-action-after-farmers-year-in-lebanese-jail/feed2stdHenk Tepper's sister Harmien Dionne pauses as she speaks to the media, during a press conference at the Quality Inn Pres Du Lac in Grand-Sault, NB on Monday, April 2, 2012.New Brunswick potato farmer Henk Tepper glances at his sister Harmien Dionne, left, during a press conference held at the Ottawa International Airport on Saturday, March 31, 2012 in Ottawa.Henk Tepper not likely to have kind words for Ottawa after year in Lebanese jailhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/henk-tepper-not-likely-to-have-kind-words-for-ottawa-after-year-in-lebanese-jail
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In July 2010, a delegation of Algerian potato growers visited a farm in New Brunswick’s Upper Valley, near the Maine border, where to avoid spreading pathogens, they were not allowed off the bus.

Promoted locally by Hendrick “Henk” Tepper of Tobique Farms — who returned to Canada this weekend after a year in a Lebanese jail on an Algerian warrant for selling bad potatoes — the trip was meant to open the Algerian potato trade to New Brunswick, and thereby break the stranglehold of France and Holland.

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Mr. Tepper, who immigrated as a child from Holland and built the family farm from 70 acres to 3,000 acres, had been in the export business since the early ’90s, and was so successful that New Brunswick named him a special ambassador. He would contact embassies and follow up leads with personal visits, which led to deals first in Cuba, then south and central America, Mexico, Portugal and Greece. Algeria had similar potential, but also risks, as the Algerians told him.

“In the past, we have received certain amounts of potatoes from New Brunswick, and it gave only surprises, that is to say, problems of qualities, sizes, varieties of potato and shipping time,” said the delegation’s leader, Kaouache Abdelouahab, according to a report on the visit in the Grand Falls Victoria Star. “The biggest problem with Canada is a problem of size and quality. We must communicate in advance if you want to ship your potatoes.”

That gentle admonishment took on a darker tone a year later, on March 23, 2011, when Mr. Tepper arrived in Lebanon on a Potatoes Canada trade mission and discovered that, since 2008, he had been wanted by Algeria on an Interpol warrant. Worse, he was in a jurisdictional limbo because the countries lack an extradition agreement.

Newly released and noticeably frail after 373 days in jail, Mr. Tepper is expected to comment on Monday, at a press conference in Grand Falls, N.B., on the role of the Canadian government in securing his release.

His words are not expected to be kind. With his farm in creditor protection under crippling debt, its production halved in his absence and having missed his daughter’s high school graduation, among other things, they are likely to be critical. To judge by those of his most prominent supporters, they will be scathing. For example Pierrette Ringuette, the Liberal Senator for New Brunswick, has called the government’s “coldness” to Mr. Tepper during his detainment “borderline cruel.”

“Having been on Parliament Hill for so long, I know full well that if we had a Canadian banker detained in Beirut without charge, he wouldn’t be there more than 48 hours,” she said.

The affair began in 2007, with potatoes that were not even Mr. Tepper’s own. They were from P.E.I. and Quebec, sourced on request to an Algerian importer after the New Brunswick season had ended, tested by labs and shipped by boat. Of the 3,800 tonnes of potatoes he shipped, however, 300 tonnes lacked documentation, and while they were in transit, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency told Mr. Tepper that in fact some were infected with bacterial ring rot, which meant they could not be sold as seed potatoes, as the importer intended.

The Algerians refused the shipment and accused Mr. Tepper of forging the CFIA documents. A parallel Canadian investigation into the alleged forgery was dropped for lack of evidence.

The potatoes were eventually sold at bargain rates to Syria and approved for human consumption.

It remained a relatively minor commercial dispute until Mr. Tepper’s trip to Lebanon. As is typical, he was not told of the warrant against him, although Canadian authorities knew about it and had even shared information about him with Algeria.

Detained but not charged, he was caught among competing interests – a Canadian farmer facing Lebanese justice for an Algerian dispute over Quebecois potatoes. Last June, his lawyer, Rodney Gillis, took the unusual step of asking Canada to lay charges against him, so that Lebanon would have competing requests, and the most compelling one would be Canada’s. It did not work.

“When I arrived at the Beirut airport and when they swiped my passport they told me that there was a problem and I had to come with them,” Mr. Tepper wrote in a diary entry, provided to the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal. “We went in a small room and soldiers and policemen with guns surrounding me. They asked me if I had ever been to Algeria and if I had done something wrong in Algeria. I replied, ‘Never.’ Then they told me that we were going somewhere else and they handcuffed me.

“Then they threw me in a truck with a cover. I was laying on the floor in the back of this truck and the truck was driving so fast my body was moving from one side of the truck to the other side,” he wrote.

“The embassy lied to the Canadian government regarding the jail conditions — they said there were windows, sunlight and fresh air. I have not seen the sun since I have been detained. At night there are many flies, we see cockroaches in the cell, toilet and shower. And then there are these huge spiders, they are grey and the biggest I saw was just as large as my hand.”

In the end, he was released without charge after a year, an outcome that Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Diane Ablonczy credited to quiet and persistent diplomatic work.

“On behalf of the Government of Canada, I am pleased that Canadian consular officials have helped secure the release of Mr. Henk Tepper,” she said in a statement.

Arriving at the Ottawa airport on Saturday, all Mr. Tepper said to reporters is that he is happy to be home. His family and lawyers expressed gratitude to Lebanon and the Canadian public, but had noticeably nothing to say about the Canadian government.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/henk-tepper-not-likely-to-have-kind-words-for-ottawa-after-year-in-lebanese-jail/feed0stdHenk Tepper is welcomed home by friends and family as he arrives at his Drummond, New Brunswick home on Sunday April 1, 2012.Canadian potato farmer Henk Tepper set to arrive in Ottawa Saturday after being released from Lebanese prisonhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/henk-tepper
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/henk-tepper#commentsSat, 31 Mar 2012 16:24:34 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=157296

By Adam Huras

New Brunswick potato farmer Henk Tepper has been released from a Lebanese jail after being held for more than a year on accusations of exporting rotten potatoes to Algeria.

Sen. Pierrette Ringuette says that Tepper will arrive in Ottawa later today.

“The Tepper Family is extremely happy to have been informed by the Government of Lebanon that Henk Tepper is no longer being detained in Beirut and is currently on a plane back to Canada,” the New Brunswick senator said.

Tepper was expected to arrive at the Ottawa airport late Saturday afternoon where he was to be reunited with his family, according to Ringuette.

He was to be accompanied his Saint John lawyer, Jim Mockler, and his lawyer in Lebanon, Joe Karam.

The Drummond, N.B., man has been in custody in Beirut since March 23 of last year on an international arrest warrant that alleges he used a forged document to clear rotten potatoes for sale for human consumption in Algeria in 2007.

Ringuette said Tepper and his family will be driving back from Ottawa to their Drummond farm on Sunday.

“Henk has a few priorities,” she said. “One is to regain his family environment, the second is to regain his health, and then in early May when it’s time to plant the fields and once he gets hands back in his soil, I think that he will once again be truly happy.

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The last year has seen Tepper’s wife and sister make a tearful plea in Ottawa to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to order the release of their loved one.

Tepper’s daughters have sent handwritten letters to the prime minister and to the Queen.

Hundreds of members of the small northwestern New Brunswick potato farming community have held rallies in Tepper’s name.

Mohamed Azakir / Reuters filesA Lebanese policeman guards the main entrance of the prison at the Justice palace in Beirut, where Canadian potato trader Henk Tepper was jailed after he was arrested by Lebanese authorities in 2011.

Tepper’s lawyer has travelled to Lebanon on several occasions to plead with Lebanese officials for his release.

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of Tepper’s detainment.

Ringuette said Saturday that it was a persistent push by Henk’s family, lawyers and a number of politicians that led to his release.

Canada’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Diane Ablonczy issued a statement on Saturday saying the federal government has quietly been working to return Tepper home.

“On behalf of the Government of Canada, I am pleased that Canadian Consular officials have helped secure the release of Mr. Henk Tepper,” Ablonczy said. “Our government has been quietly and persistently working through diplomatic channels to resolve his situation.

“While I appreciate the independence of the judicial process in Lebanon, given the length of time that Mr. Tepper has already spent in detention, his deteriorating health condition, as well as compassionate considerations, I hope that we can find a timely solution that will be satisfactory for both countries and will allow for Mr. Tepper’s return to Canada,” reads the letter from Ablonczy. “I welcome your guidance and advice on how to best advance the case of Mr. Tepper, and I look forward to our continued co-operation on consular and other bilateral issues of mutual interest.”

Minister of state for foreign affairs spokesman John Babcock confirmed on Saturday the federal government knew of Tepper’s imminent release on March 26 and then worked on the logistics of bringing him home.

Babcock said the Interpol red notice issued by Algeria remains in effect, but that Tepper will not be arrested upon his arrival in Canada.

Ringuette said Tepper’s lawyers will work on removing the warrant.

“That certainly is an issue that will have to be dealt with,” Ringuette said.

New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/henk-tepper/feed7std“Henk has a few priorities” once he's back in Canada, Pierrette Ringuette said. “One is to regain his family environment, the second is to regain his health."A Lebanese policeman guards the main entrance of the prison at the Justice palace in Beirut, where Canadian potato trader Henk Tepper was jailed after he was arrested by Lebanese authorities in 2011. Henk Tepper's wife Ella Tepper, left, and Tepper's sister Harmein Dionne speak at a news conference in Ottawa Dec. 20 calling for the Canadian government to assist in Tepper's release.Family of Canadian farmer jailed in Lebanon begs Stephen Harper for his releasehttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/family-of-canadian-farmer-jailed-in-lebanon-begs-stephen-harper-for-his-release
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By Thandi Fletcher

OTTAWA — The wife and sister of a New Brunswick potato farmer jailed in Lebanon made a tearful plea on Tuesday to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to order the release of Henk Tepper.

“The hardest thing is trying to be strong for your kids, it’s very hard when you have to try to put your kids to sleep at night when they’re crying,” said an emotional Ella Tepper, her voice wavering as she struggled to speak about her husband.

“And trying to make them feel better, but there’s only one thing that would make them feel better is to have their dad home for Christmas.”

For nine months, Henk Tepper has been detained in a Lebanon jail.

He was arrested in March as he arrived in the country over claims that he used a forged document to clear rotten potatoes for sale for human consumption in Algeria in 2007.

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Tepper’s wife spoke to reporters at a news conference on Parliament Hill, along with Harmein Dionne, his sister.

Mark Rickard/Canadaeast News ServiceHenk Tepper's sister, Harmein

Dionne kept her arm wrapped protectively around her sister-in-law as both dabbed their teary eyes with scrunched up tissue.

Senators Pierrette Ringuette and Mac Harb, who were in Lebanon last week to see Tepper and meet with high-ranking Lebanese officials about the case, said the Canadian government needs to order the release of Tepper.

“Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada, and he is responsible for the citizens of Canada, whether they are here or elsewhere around the world,” said Ringuette. “Ultimately, Stephen Harper is responsible for Henk Tepper.”

In the House of Commons last week, Diane Ablonczy, the minister of state of foreign affairs, said that securing Tepper’s release is not as simple as writing a letter to Lebanese government officials.

“The Lebanese government specifically dismisses the allegation that a simple letter would release Mr. Tepper and affirms that it must act in accordance with Lebanon’s international legal obligations when faced with a request for extradition,” Ablonczy told the House of Commons last week.

New Brunswick Senator Pierrette Ringuette is blasting the Canadian government for its inaction in trying to free potato farmer Henk Tepper, who she says has been left to “rot away in a foreign detention centre.”

Tepper was imprisoned in March as he arrived in Lebanon on a trade mission over allegations that he used a forged document to clear rotten food for sale for human consumption in Algeria in 2007.

Ringuette’s statement comes on the same day it was revealed that Tepper’s father, Berend, has endorsed a plan to sell off more than half of his son’s potato fields in an effort to erase some of the New Brunswick farmer’s $11-million debt.

Ringuette is in Beirut accompanied by Tepper’s lawyer, Jim Mockler, and Lebanon-born Senator Mac Harb, to make a personal appeal to the Lebanese government.

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“This senseless situation could have been resolved weeks — even months — ago,” Ringuette said. “All the Lebanese have been waiting for is a clear request from Ottawa to send our farmer home.”

Canada’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Diane Ablonczy, has stated that the issue is not as simple as sending a letter to Lebanon asking for his release.

Meanwhile, the family farm’s lawyer will ask on Friday for creditor protection to be extended until Feb. 10.

Postmedia News

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/ottawa-letting-jailed-canadian-farmer-rot-away-in-a-foreign-detention-centre-n-b-senator/feed0stdA Lebanese policeman guards the main entrance of the prison at the Justice palace in Beirut December 15, 2011. Canadian potato trader Henk Tepper has been jailed here since he was arrested by Lebanese authorities in March upon arrival at Beirut's airport for a trade mission, on the charge by the Algerian government that he had tried to export rotten food to Algeria in 2007, according to local media.Henk Tepper (Mark Rickard/Canadaeast News Service)National Post front page for Aug. 19, 2011http://news.nationalpost.com/news/national-post-front-page-for-aug-19-2011
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/national-post-front-page-for-aug-19-2011#commentsFri, 19 Aug 2011 12:00:31 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=88466

Friday is Henk Tepper’s 149th day in the Beirut Palace of Justice prison, where he has been held without charge since March 23 after Algeria called in Interpol over a “bad” shipment of potatoes. But this could be his last day in prison; the Lebanese prosecutor handling the case has said he will decide by the end of the week whether to release Mr. Tepper on house arrest.

Lebanon has also assured lawyers for the detained Canadian farmer that it will not extradite him to Algeria to face trial until a review of his arrest has been completed. If Interpol concludes the arrest was not valid, he could be sent home.

The bizarre case of the New Brunswick farmer has caused barely a ripple in Ottawa, despite the family’s efforts to bring Mr. Tepper’s plight to the doorsteps of Parliament. His sister says they are on the verge of losing the family farm, and they worry about how much longer the 44-year-old can stand in a Beirut cell.

“I’m finding the coldness of the Canadian government toward Mr. Tepper borderline cruel,” says Pierrette Ringuette, a Liberal Senator for New Brunswick who has been fighting for Mr. Tepper’s release. “Having been on Parliament Hill for so long, I know full well that if we had a Canadian banker detained in Beirut without charge, he wouldn’t be there more than 48 hours.”

Trouble began for the Dutch-Canadian farmer in the fall of 2007, when he heard from an Algerian metals importer looking for a shipment of potatoes. Because the New Brunswick season had ended, Mr. Tepper sourced the 3,800 tonnes from P.E.I. and Quebec, had them tested by two labs certified by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and, once they were given the green light, sent them off to Algeria.

But before the shipment arrived, the CFIA alerted Mr. Tepper that it had found 300 tonnes to be infected with Bacterial Ring Rot, a fungus that has no adverse health effects on humans but reduces the yield if they are used for seed. The news seemed to outrage the Algerians, in whose deeply tribal society the lines between personal and business tend to blur.

“The structure of capitalism in the Middle East is dominated by families,” says Paul Kingston, professor of Middle East politics at the University of Toronto. “There is clearly a blurring of lines between personal and business. What that means for how business is conducted is less clear.”

The Algerian importer wanted to sell the shipment as seed potatoes — their price is roughly 20 times higher than table potatoes — but because of the presence of the ring rot, he learned he could not.

The shipment was refused and the Algerians accused Mr. Tepper of forging the CFIA certifications, an allegation the farmer denies. The CFIA conducted its own investigation into the forged documents, but has not released its findings.

Mr. Tepper eventually sold the shipment at a salvage price to a buyer in Syria. The potatoes were tested yet again and approved for human consumption.

In 2008 he launched a civil suit against the CFIA for its role in the ordeal.

That same year Algeria contacted Interpol Lyon and requested a red notice. While not an arrest warrant, a red notice indicates an individual is wanted, either for prosecution or to serve time.

On March 23, Mr. Tepper flew to Lebanon as part of a delegation from Potato Canada, a trade organization. He was arrested upon arrival at the Beirut airport.

Earlier this summer, Mr. Tepper’s lawyers successfully requested Interpol investigate the legitimacy of the Interpol red notice. If the Interpol Review Committee finds the notice ineligible, Mr. Tepper could be released from the Lebanese prison, spared extradition to Algeria and returned safely home.

The usual three to six months for such a review has been extended because of the committee’s heavy workload. However, sources tell the National Post the Lebanese Minister of Justice, Chakib Cortbaoui, has assured them he will not sign extradition papers while the review is under way.

Adam Huras/Telegraph-JournalHarmien Dionne is fighting for her brother's return to Canada.

In the meantime, the lawyers, friends and family of the imprisoned farmer continue to worry about his physical and mental health. And they still have no answers as to why the Canadian government appears to be doing nothing to help get him home.

In June, in a desperate attempt to secure his release, Rodney Gillis, one of Mr. Tepper’s lawyers, went to the unusal length of asking Ottawa to charge Mr. Tepper with a Canadian crime.

“It’s strange for a lawyer to go to the media or confront the minister to say, ‘charge my client or either arrest arrest him. Send a warrant for his arrest and we will even pay for his airfare home and you can put him in jail when he comes home,’ but that would get Mr. Tepper out of Lebanon and back to Canada,” the lawyer told the Bugle-Observer in June.

Canada has not.

A spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said: “The government of Canada cannot intervene in the judicial affairs of a sovereign country, nor can it seek preferential treatment or try to exempt Canadian citizens from the due process of local law, but Canada does assist citizens in a variety of ways.”

In 2008 Canada secured the release of Canadian national Brenda Martin from a Mexican prison under the Transfer of Offenders Treaty. Convicted of cocaine trafficking and sentenced to 10 years in prison, Ms Martin received several visits from former prime minister Paul Martin and was flown back to Canada in a government plane. Once home, she served nine days in prison and was then paroled.

Canada has not signed a Transfer of Offenders Treaty with Lebanon or Algeria.

Sen. Ringuette is concerned the government’s tepid response stems from the civil suit brought against the CFIA by Mr. Tepper in 2008. In a May meeting with senior members of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Justice, she said she learned that the litigation team advising the Justice department on Mr. Tepper’s case is made up of the same lawyers defending the CFIA in the civil suit.

Christian Girouard, a Justice spokesman, said: “there is no ‘litigation team’ advising the government with respect to the Hank Tepper consular matter. Justice counsel provide advice to all client departments, and are doing so in the consular case.”

In the meantime, Mr. Tepper’s Tobique farms have produced roughly half what they would in a regular season, the result of the farmer’s absence. His family has secured creditor protection for the company’s outstanding bills, which now amount to more than $8-million.

“I’ve sent letters to Harper, to Baird, to others too, but I get nothing back; I get no answers,” said Harmien Dionne, Mr. Tepper’s sister, who describes her brother as a man who likes to be busy, and whose mental health she worries about, now that he is left to do little more than pace all day. “They are ruining the life of an innocent man.”